Monday, July 29, 2013

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

FOUR NEW POSTS FROM THE LION OF THE LEFT:

One of my favorite things to do on a glorious Sunday morning
was to drive with my wife to Tiburon, go to Sam's Anchor Cafe, and sit out on
the deck and have a delicious brunch.Little did I know the city of Tiburon was taking a picture of our
license plate and creating a database of every single car that passes into or
out of their town.No one knows
how long they hold on to this data, who has access it or whether they share it
with anyone else or even if you need a warrant to see it.It is a small example of how we are
losing the war on privacy and the 4th amendment on the premise the more the
government knows the better we are protected.(anyone remember Ben Franklin's quote?)

In the last week, the House of Representatives failed to rein in the
N.S.A. (National Security Agency) program which sucks up every bit of
electronic communications in America and abroad every day.San Franciscan's will be pleased to
know their congressional representative, Nancy Pelosi, voted to protect the
N.S.A. and continue to let them spy without warrants or probable cause.This is the same Pelosi who voted to
give the telecom companies immunity after they illegally turned over customer
information to the Bush White House without warrants of any kind.This says allot about how she views her
constituents.Despite President
Obama's assurances he welcomed a debate on this issue, it turns out he quietly
lobbied the House to defeat this attempt to rein in a program which clearly
violates the constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and
seizures of your person and private papers.The mainstream media was nowhere to be found on this debate
either.While CNN et.al. were all
George Zimmerman all the time, and maybe a little royal baby thrown in for good
measure, there were no clips of Congressional floor speeches, analysis of the
issue, chronicle of who is on what side or even the final vote tally.

While the House debate was going on, other news has surfaced to lend
credence to the concerns of civil libertarians that the situation is much worse
than originally thought.

Professor Randy Bennet, of Georgetown School of Law, has revealed the
Consumer Federation Protection Bureau, a creation of the Dodd/Frank financial
services reform legislation, is compiling a national database of personal
information including monthly credit card, mortgage, car and other
payments.The Post Office,
according to USA Today, has the "Mail Isolation Control and Tracking
Program" which photographs "every" piece of mail processed in
the United States.(160 billion
pieces last year)The picture
shows whom you are writing to and their address.No one knows how long this data, or the Consumers Bureau
data, is kept, where it is kept, who has access to it.While a warrant is needed to open the
letter, no warrant is needed for the Post Office to track who you write to or
correspond with.It is clear a
warrant is not needed to access this Post Office data.(you will heartened to know in 2007
President Bush asserted in a signing statement the government did not need a
warrant to open mail in an "emergency")The Oregonian quoted a former federal agent as saying,
"...looking at just the outside of letters, and other mail, I can see who
you bank with, who you communicate with and much more."

The Post Office program came to light when a man in Buffalo, New York,
who used to be associated with the Earth Liberation Front more than 10 years
ago, found a memo in his mail showing it was being monitored by the government.

USA Today is reporting Obama Care is creating a national data base of
every prescription you have ever received, treatments, procedures, doctor's
notes and anything else healthcare related, once again with no transparency on
how long they keep the data, who has access on what criteria and how it can be
disseminated.As genetic testing
increases...genetic mapping grows...as Obama care pays for mental health
treatments, this information becomes more and more intimately personal and more
dangerous if it is released or made available to employers or insurance
companies.

The irony should be lost on no one that as Edward Snowden sits in the
Moscow airport seeking asylum in some country, the programs he revealed are
being debated and discussed at the highest levels of government.German Chancellor Angela Merkle justly
demanded explanations from the U.S. about spying on German citizens without
their knowledge.How could Snowden
be a traitor or danger if what he revealed has generated so much concern
worldwide?

Obama, Bush, Pelosi, Feinstein and the rest hope the short attention
span of the American people will guarantee the tempest over the destruction of
the 4th amendment will dissipate.They might be right.However, what is now being revealed is your privacy is under assault
from your doctor's office to the corner mailbox to your favorite brunch site
and you need to know and you need to find out how to protect the information
and find out who has access to it.Someone has to say hold it and set some rules and defend the 4th
amendment.Someone has to say the
tradeoff between privacy and security is not absolute and it’s not a tradeoff
you are willing to endure.Someone
has to say we have much more to fear from these huge data troves than we will
ever have to fear from terrorists.Someone has to say our democracy is threatened when there are few or no
restrictions on the power of the government.If you wait too long, you will wake up to find no amendment
left to defend.